Thursday, March 08, 2007

New Beginning 237

“And once again, the savage pampas teemed with native revolutionaries bringing rivers of blood and death to the native Paavvidians and Fornescues alike. The Fornescues that the natives couldn’t impale, they burnt in their prefab bungalows.” Tiki-Manu read from Orphoonia’s history of Paavve.

“How can you read that drivel? Is this the one where the bare-chested hero conquers the world, screws all of the female Paavvidians with big tits, becomes dictator for life and only has two new scars to show for it?” Dak-Omar used his duffel as a stool.

The Flibberaanian behind the bar lifted his apron and brandished his taktuk in Dak-Omar's direction. "Does that mean I'm getting a Whiskey Blizzard or not?" Dak-Omar called out.

"By the Eyes of PW Drakka-Noblex-Pluuunia, you certainly will, Sir, and I shall be stirring this one with extra care."

"Good."

Tiki-Manu dragged her eyes up from the pages of her yuukulvibberkik to check out the Fliberaanian. ''Maybe not so good," she said. "That taktuk doesn't look any too clean." Opening: Anonymous.....Continuation: McKoala

This is pure comedy, I assume, and in fact is going for gigantic tongue in cheekness. If that's right, then all the foreign-ish words are great because they deliberately say you're making up stuff right off the top of your head and being nonsensical. If this is actually supposed to be a possible alternate world...

then the language needs a lot of work. The words "fornescue", "tiki-manu", weinerman", "wimple", and "dak omar" would never exist in the same place as each one screams that they are each from a different and unrelated language, namely Frenchesque, Polynesianey, Germanicese, English-like, and Arabician. OK, you got me, fornescue, weinerman, and wimple could be from related but separate languages. Alright, OK, I guess you could be deliberately throwing people from different language backgrounds together, just like there can be a conversation between Jim, Xing-Yun, and Kalani in the real world, but I hope you're making that choice.

However, my guess is that you're just having fun and so the multiple random languages work for that.

I can only say, "Huh?" This was confusing. I think the problem was the vast array of new terms with nothing in the text to anchor meaning to them. Editing should fix this. "Flouncing her wimples" was odd but intriguing.

My other suggestion is that you reconsider the names, even if this is a parody (my assumption). They were difficult to read.

I like it. I had to reread to catch everything - the Tiki-Manus and Paavvidians are fun but require more neurons firing than I normally have by now during the work week. I would read on. I like the sly feel of it, and I want to see where it goes.

I went to a writer's workshop years ago and some guy's story was a string of zany jokes of this style, which was fun at first, but by the 25th page it was getting old. He said he couldn't do the linear plot thing and pulled out 800 additional scribbley pages which he said were just as zany as that first bunch. That stack was a little scary to behold. He had subbed all over the place and only got form rejections. I think for most people short is sweet for pure humor, so hopefully you do wrap it around a plot line [like WICKED did], if you want to keep people's attention for the length of a novel.

I submitted another continuation, but I agree with EE that McKoala's is better.

Tighe paused the DVD. “What the hell is this? This isn’t my story.”

“Nope, they effing rewrote everything in the effing screenplay.” Dane leaned back on the recliner and belched.

“They gave me tits. They turned my character into a woman. I thought we wrote Brokeback in outerspace. This is nothing but Little Women in pressure suits,” Tighe said, replaying the scene. Dane broke out laughing at the lines.

“They made our characters sound like they got three brain cells that still work. Don't they know that they are brawlers, morons, almost incapable of reading those cheesy, airport romance novels... keeps their minds off alcohol, brawling, and the tight-assed, military types they work with.” Dane pronounced it “wit” and not “with.”

“And those names, damn those names… What’s a Paavve? What asshole would ever be called Dak-Omar or Tiku-Manu. Has sanity flown away? Has probity left the room? Has reason died? In what drugged-out writer’s delusion did characters get names so weird the actors stumble over them. I mean, do they fancy themselves Shakespeare? What happened to a simple Billy, Joe or Jim,” Tighe grumbled. Dane opened a bottle of beer and raised it to Tighe.

“Scrotum,” Dane made the toast.

“Scrotum?”

Dane raised his bottle to his lips and talked over it. “Yeah, next novel we write, name the hero Scrotum Newbury. Serves them right. They took our baby from Atlantis and cruelly blasted it into outerspace.” Tighe laughed at the outburst.

“Oh the horror. Oh the humanity,” Tighe joked. He leaned against Dane and together, they watched the rest of the DVD without interrupting it.

good point TESLA, Even Doug Adams in HHGTTG breaks out of his wild humor for some straight exposition. I have trouble with humor in that a joke like "scrotum newbury" works but it may not advance the plot or help the story.

I also wonder if the original story can make any sense without pages of world description and constant grounding of the odd names. Writing a story like that is a little like writing "jabberwocky" - the words have to fit the structure of the English language so that they act as verbs, nouns, etc... Then they also have to have real meanings to the story.

For intance: When we read the opening, we can tell that a paavidian and a fornescue are races or countries (like Dutch or Irish). Orphoonia is a world like Neptune or Barsoom (Mars). The out of place names - Pampas, Bungalow, wimple and the like, will ground the story in some reality. Odd as they are, people still read them as real.

In McKoala's continuation, The phrase By the Eyes of PW Drakka-Noblex-Pluuunia are a cultural reference we can't place. That requires exposition in the story. It's like the "Rose Line" in the Da Vinci Code. We all know it's there but Brown gave it a new, very different cultural meaning. He had to explain it while the characters walked it. In the movie that got boring really fast. That's why the scenes in the movie were cut so fast and quick. It slows a novel.

I like light, fun and comic novels but the comedy is tightly bound to the story. It adds a level of difficulty to the writing. So does world-building.

I wasn't sure if this was parody or not; but there were an awful lot of weird words and some familiar ones used in weird ways. Fun to write a continuation for! But maybe a few too many for such a short section.

Was it the alien subcultures or the subjugators that had the BO and webbed feet?

"They’re object lessons in how to subjugate entire alien subcultures with BO and webbed feet."

I missed that little bit. It is delightfully ambiguous, isn't it?

Obviously, no soldier waiting for his XO would have BO, so it's the subcultures (heh, heh, heh, love that misused word) who have webbed feet and stinky armpits. This is especially true of soldiers hankering for bar fights.

I've worn a wimple often enough. I guess I could flounce it, if the meaning here is to twitch and straighten the cloth, rather than sewing a frill on the edge. Of course, if whosit has multiple arms, she could be sewing frills and reading from a book at the same time, no problem.

The author might want to follow Douglas Adams' lead and define a few terms as he goes.